Perhaps someday down the road a 'cure' may take the form of individualized genetic vaccines, which enable our bodies to manage cancer cells more effectively and prevent them from spreading rampant. But we're still going to get cancer. It just won't be nearly as life threatening or life altering as it is today.
Here's more food for thought - Cancer is a naturally occurring biological process that is as old as evolution itself. It is impossible to cure it or end it, just manage and control it. Not to mention the fact that we direct most of our energies treating cancer's symptoms and not the causes that induce the process by which it overwhelms our autoimmune systems and spreads.
The wildfire-like rise of cancer incidence over the past 20 years has brought shame and disgrace to the Nixon administration's declared "War on Cancer" from the early 1970s. (How's that going anyway?)
More so, the continued defunding of the National Cancer Institute budget by the current administration is yet another perfunctory slap in the face to the more than 10,000,000 American cancer survivors (and their 30,000,000+ caregiver network) who should be rioting in the streets in unification to demand answers and action on the part of the 2008 presidential candidates. Where do they stand on the issue? Hillary? Obama? Are you going to publicly promise to replenish the depleted NCI budget for 2009?
Frankly, I'm willing to bet that if Jenna Bush got cervical cancer tomorrow, George W. and his unenlightened cadre of myopic cronies might reconsider what he has done to decimate our hope in the government's prioritization of this public health epidemic.
Yeah, I said it.
I am a survivor because I choose to be. I wear my experiences like a badge of honor. I am proud of what I have been through and hope to encourage others to stand up, embrace their survivorship and shout to the rooftops, "I Am Still Here."
And when you're young, it's terribly isolating. If I have learned anything, it's that psychosocial support and access to those resources is as critical to survivorship as is access to quality care. It may suck, but at least you're not alone.
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